Consumer testing is a technique used to evaluate a level of consumer acceptance of a product idea or prototype prior to introducing the product to the market. The consumer test serves as a “technical measure” of how a prototype product would actually perform if introduced into the market. Unfortunately the consumer testing methodology is limited in its ability to characterize feeding behaviors of animals that might provide greater insights into why animals prefer a certain food.
The predominant conventional practice to measure or predict the success of a new prototype animal food is to feed one product versus another to the animal and determine which product the animal prefers based on some predetermined metrics or technical measures. However, in the context of evaluating the animal feeding experience, consumer testing is more of a measure of the consumer's perception of the animal's feeding experience rather than the consumer's own experience. Unless conducted in the consumer's home, a preference test inherently excludes the interaction of the owner with the animal during the administration of the test (e.g., the test feeding). The owner's viewpoint is generally not available because the preference tests are typically done with kenneled animals. Any judgments made regarding product performance are based entirely on the animal's response to the food (e.g., a metric or technical measure such as the amount of food consumed by the animal). Accordingly, any influence the owner might have on the animal's feeding experience is essentially missing from conventional preference tests. Therefore, conducting a preference test without the presence of the owner is an incomplete measure for assessing the consumer's perception of the animal's feeding experience.
Knowing that the consumer, and not the animal, makes the direct decision to purchase the product, and recognizing the shortcomings of conventional preference tests in assessing the feeding experience of an animal, in home use tests (IHUT) are designed to determine the perception of the animal owner with respect to the performance of the product. Accordingly, in such owner participating animal feeding tests, samples of the food are provided to the owners of the animals. The owners are instructed to feed the sample foods to the animal in their home for a prescribed test period (usually a short period of time such as two weeks or less, for example) and observe the feeding experience. At the end of the prescribed test period, the consumers are administered a survey or questionnaire asking various questions relating to their opinions of various aspects of the food product or feeding experience of the animal including an overall acceptance rating (OAR) question such as: “Considering everything about the animal food you received from us, please indicate the one word or phrase which best describes your overall opinion of this dry pet food. A=Excellent, B=Very Good, C=Good, D=Fair, E=Poor.” While this approach to assessing the performance of a sample product may be reflective of how the owner rates the product, administering actual consumer tests is costly, time consuming, and tedious.
The opinion of the consumer is imperative to the success of a food product for an animal. Because this opinion is principally based on the consumer's perception of the animal's feeding experience and administering an IHUT is costly, time consuming, and tedious, there is a need for a predictive modeling technique to predict consumer response to a sample product without performing an IHUT. Furthermore, there is a need to determine a set of technical measures of the characteristics or attributes of a sample product that may be used to predict a consumer response of the sample product without performing an IHUT. There is also a need for a predictive modeling technique to predict the results of an IHUT based on technical measures that can be determined independently of the IHUT.